Filtered tobacco products ban

Pacific Grove's environmental steward volunteer of the year described 10+ years of shoreline cleanups: over 31,000 butts collected in 2019 across four miles, 26,000+ in 2025, with receptacles capturing only 17.5% of shoreline cigarette waste. She presented 200+ resident signatures supporting the ban.

Save Our Shores' executive director presented cleanup data from roughly 60 Monterey Bay beaches showing nearly half a million cigarette butts collected since 2013, second only to unidentifiable plastic pieces.

Santa Cruz County's tobacco education project director detailed the health science — filters leach lead, arsenic, and nicotine, offer no proven health benefit — and walked through how Santa Cruz built its data-driven ban, including over $2 million a year in mitigation costs.

The Monterey County tobacco-control advocate showed that Pacific Grove earned an 'A' from the American Lung Association and urged the commission to keep leading on tobacco control.

Asked about enforcement — who handles online sales, whether smoking filtered cigarettes would be illegal or just sales — and suggested education for CSOs and a liaison to help businesses during the transition.

A 50-year resident, she said she has witnessed decades of butts on streets and beaches and hopes the ordinance succeeds and spreads along the Monterey Bay coastline.

Thanked the presenters and asked whether nicotine pouches, contained in plastic netting, should also be included in the ban; urged the commission to forward the proposal.

A former Save Our Shores volunteer supported the ordinance but raised legality questions, and wanted the TerraCycle cigarette receptacles on Lighthouse restored and more effective street sweeping.